


a way out of the mind

by Anonymous



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Dissociative Amnesia, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage, Indirect Self-Harm, Light Yagami dissociates the living shit out of himself - the fanfic, Light centric, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Pre-Canon, Self-Harm, This is the first thing I've written in years, Vent Writing, Vent fanfic, could be read as a no kira au as well, i'm self projecting so light has problems disorder in this one, implied/referenced eating disorder, please be nice to me, references to past direct self-harm as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Unable to directly hurt himself without raising negative attention, young and trauma-fueled Light Yagami learned how to casually place himself in harm's way.
Kudos: 38
Collections: Anonymous





	a way out of the mind

In retrospect, Light supposes he should have noticed something was wrong when the nightmares never came. Even at such a young age, he knew there was no way he'd be able to go on with his life like nothing had happened. It would have been expected for his mood to take a turn for the worse, his grades to drop underground, and his eyes not to be able to stay closed at night for long ever again.  
It was a surprise then, when there was no apparent change. He still woke up from a good night of dreamless sleep everyday, went to school and aced his exams like he'd always had, and came back home to his picture-perfect family. It all had the distant sound of buzzing static as a background noise now, but it's not like he could complain, and risk losing the last pretense of normality his life still held.  
Light wasn't dumb, he knew exactly what people would say if word got out. Between "that rotten boy, what was he thinking?" and "that poor kid, what will become of his life?", his answer was a hard neither: he had no use for their disdain, let alone their pity. He'd rather stay as the perfect son, the tennis champion, the number 1 student in Japan, the kid with absolutely nothing missing in his life. He was fine, thank you.  
Sure, sometimes he'd space out and it would take him all his effort not to let his eyes get wet, but hey, he never claimed to be perfect. Probably just a little overwhelmed, he tried so hard on his studies, he'd be alright. Nobody paid it much attention, and he couldn't blame them. Teary eyes on a blank face are so easy to miss after all.  
Somebody did notice it though, once. He'd been in class that day, when seemingly out of nowhere he was hit by such an overwhelming sadness, he had no choice but to discreetly wipe his tears away with the back of this hand. The girl sitting next to him looked like she'd just seen a ghost.  
"Are you crying?" she shout-whispered, wide-eyed.  
Light made a show of fake yawning and mirroring her shocked expression. He wasn't crying, he was just sleepy. The boy in the seat behind her laughed at their exchange.  
"What?" she said, "He could be crying!"  
The boy rolled his eyes.  
Light couldn't blame him. If somebody told him Light Yagami was crying during class, he wouldn't believe it either.  
He didn't cry. Even when he was alone in his room and forced his tears to fall -- he'd read it somewhere that it would release stress hormones --, it was never more than one or two lonely teardrops making their way down his face, never full crying.  
He had rage outbursts so strong he had to politely excuse himself to the nearest empty space and pull his hair strong enough to give him a headache and scratch his arms until he drew blood and bite the back of his hand to stop himself from screaming. He had memory lapses that could last anywhere between three seconds and three months. He even had a stress induced nosebleed once. But he didn't cry.  
He was alright, he told himself, he was fine, and most of the times he believe it.  
Light only got perfect grades, most girls his age wanted to date him, and his parents couldn't be prouder of him. There wasn't anything lacking in his life, but none of what he had felt real enought. It all felt empty and unreal and unbelievably boring, and he only knew a few ways of getting his heart to race. He couldn't inflict enough pain on himself without leaving marks, permanent or otherwise; his father had warned him not to take such long walks alone after multiple mugging cases; and he'd quit his soap eating habit after reading a book about eating disorders for class where the protagonist caused her stomach to tear in an attempt to induce vomit. His last option was the most obvious one.  
He viewed it as a game, and the rules were simple. First, he'd have to find a potential pedophile. Then, he would innocently place himself in their way, and do everything he could to get them to notice him. If he misjudged it and his target wasn't actually a pedophile, he'd lose. If even though the target was a pedophile, he didn't manage to catch their attention, he'd lose. If he catched their attention with anything but exemplary behavior for a student his age, he'd lose. If anyone, his target included, suspected he knew what he was doing, he'd lose.  
Like in everything else in his life, he'd never lost.  
In the few occasions where things escalated, he didn't know what to think of it. Since he could get enough fear, disgust, rage and validation from only a few predatory glances, physical contact wasn't necessary to win. He didn't want to consider it a lose either.  
Part of him knew he should get himself a different hobby, but part of him knew it wouldn't work. Joy and pain are equally desirable emotions after so long feeling numb, and chess is more intense when you play as the piece you'll sacrifice.  
Light couldn't remember ever getting a crush before, but he'd faked multiple ones over the years, so he could trust his performance to be convincing. He knew letting his grades drop would be the most obvious option to get attention, but since there was no way to predict his parents' reaction, it was off the table. No, he couldn't become a disappointment now, he'd worked too hard on his perfect student persona just to drop it for such a frivolous reason. Better stick to the plan.  
He'd let his eyes follow his teacher as he walked around the classroom, careful not to let his dreamy expression slip. He'd been told it was creepy when he stared at people, like he was picturing in detail how to murder them. Ridiculous, I don't know where they got that idea, he thought, putting on a soft smile he hoped would read as innocent adoration, but I shouldn't risk it anyways.  
He'd always be the last one to leave after class, asking questions that were very obviously below his level. He didn't need to fake his nervousness, the mere thought of what he was doing was enough to send the most horrible sort of thrill down his spine. Sometimes, when these conversations went on for too long, his panic rose enough to make him light headed and cold, and he felt like he was about to pass out. It made him feel so fucking weak. No, he didn't need to fake his nervousness, but he did make use of his acting skills to make it seen like the cute sort of nervousness, the sort you'd get from talking to your crush, instead of the sort you'd get from talking to a potential rapist.  
Light would make sure to look up to his teacher from behind his bangs, and shoot them a quick, shy smile before resuming his questions. He'd make sure to fidget with his sleeves and play with his hair once in a while. He'd make sure to only ask the dumbest questions.  
It usually -- sadly, thankfully -- led nowhere, both to his disappointnent and relief. It was easier when he overheard his female classmates complaining about a teacher's behavior, so he would know who to focus on, but that happened far from often. Most of the times, he'd have to guess and keep his expectations low.  
It was difficult, he wasn't looking for just anybody. He'd made a mental checklist for this years ago. He needed someone who seemed both likely to screw a teenager given the oportunity and unlikely to become obsessed and try to coerce said teenager if denied the oportunity. Those were hard to balance, but not as impossible as you'd think. Criminals aren't neatly split into "evil masterminds" and "uncontrollable beasts" after all, he thought, The great majority of them are just people. Rotten people. Light knew his way around people. He'd just had to find the right one for the task.  
His physics teacher was a good candidate. A sad, insecure man, who seemed to like Light even more than his fellow teachers. Considering his lack of teaching skills, Light was sure respect was the only thing stopping people from questioning how he was still employed.  
He was the only teacher who still threw games and competitions in a class of fifteen year olds, and everytime he'd bring a kitkat bar to offer as a prize to the student who made the most points, or who first answered correctly, or who better explained the subject. Nobody but Light ever won those. Sometimes he'd bring things to class for the sole reason of making a demonstration, and by the end of the class he'd turn to Light and ask "Do you want to keep these? I'm not going to use them anyways". By the end of the year he had four new pencils, two new pens, and was starting to wonder if there was a kitkat flavor he hadn't tasted yet.  
Most importantly, if the sort of joke he made to break the ice in class was anything to go by, his moral stamina was running low.  
That day, physics was Light's last period, and he stayed in the room after all his classmates had already left, as he usually did, and the teacher was still there, struggling with the projector. Light was taking bites of his kitkat bar in between his questions. He had no expectations of eating in a sexy way, not after the failure that was his practice in front of the mirror, but he could trust himself not to eat in a way that looked gross.  
He couldn't recall anything that differentiated that day from all other days, but there must have been something -- maybe his sexy-eating attempt had shown results after all --, because, unlike all other days, today was the day he ended up laid over a table.  
Light didn't play virgin, but in the end, that's what all of them ended up believing. No matter how many times it had happened before, his reactions were still mostly the same. Wide eyes, sweaty hands, shaky legs, a completely shameful stutter in his voice. It was easy to attribute his panic to inexperience rather than the opposite of it. It didn't help that in a few days these memories would have been mostly wiped from his brain, leaving only a vague idea and a few blurry images. The touch always felt equally alien, no matter how many times he knew he'd felt it before, because the memory of it wasn't there.  
Light wondered if they all always finished quickly, or if flashing in and out of conscience had messed with his sense of time. He was sure, by the end of it, that he didn't have more than three seconds of memories of the event. Couldn't have been so fast though, his disheveled appearence said otherwise. Maybe five minutes, that was quick, but possible. Light didn't have enough memories of it to fill five minutes. He didn't dare imagine it had lasted more than that.  
He remembers his teacher told him something as he fastened his belt, and he remembers nodding softly, not sure what he was agreeing with. He remembers leaving the classroom, and heading to the restroom to check on his appearence. He made sure he was alone in there, then locked the door. His hair was a little messy, even though he didn't remember having it touched, so he took a minute to fix it. His clothes were a little wrinkled, and he was doing his best to straighten them when he noticed a little dark spot on his white shirt. A blood stain. Why was there blood on his clothes, and why on his shirt of all places, how did it even get there? Am I hurt?, he asked himself, Am I in pain? He didn't know the answer.  
As soon as he spotted the blood stain, he entered a bathroom stall to inspect himself for any injuries -- yes, the bathroom door was locked, but he'd rather stay on the safe side --. He wasn't sure what he found -- "It can't have been anything too scandalous," he thought, "I don't remember doing anything out of the ordinary" --, but he knew that after putting his clothes back on, he placed some folded toilet paper into his underwear, like some sort of menstrual pad, and inspected his backside in the mirror to make sure it didn't show. Then he washed his shirt in the sink, not bothering to take it off, all the while wondering how that one single drop of blood had ended up in such a visible place. At least it was still fresh, he knew from experience that blood stains only got more and more difficult to wash off the longer they'd been there. When he finished, his shirt was as white was it'd been that morning when he left to school, only a little wetter, but a spot damp with water was easier to explain than one damp with blood.  
Only when he closed the faucet did the exhaution hit him, and he supported himself on the sink with both hands, not trusting his legs. He glazed up into the mirror and saw himself doubled, two selves overlapping in the middle like a venn diagram. One looked foward, eyes crazed with something wilder than wrath, deeper than terror, and so intense anyone would be able to tell that even though he was looking at the mirror, this wasn't what he was seeing. One, a step to the side, stared blankly at his other self, eyes so glassy and empty they could be mistaken by those of a dead man. Which one is real, he asked himself, which one is me? Both, he knew, both. He was a house, and no matter how good he was at pretending to be the person living in it, nobody had lived there in years -- he was every single ghost --.  
He walked back home that day, like usual, and all the while a part of him tried to spot any odd chages on his behavior, unsuccessfully. He wished that for once in his life he could look like what he felt, but right now, his mind was too disconnected from his body to hold any sort of influence over it. So he watched himself walk home as if today had been like any other day, like he'd stayed a little late after class studying or talking to a friend or any of the more reasonable alternatives to what had actually happened. He watched himself as he stopped at some point on the street to nonchalantly check on his appearence on a shop window, he watched himself as he resumed his way home. At some point, somebody called him on his cellphone, and he kept walking as he answered them. A classmate that greeted him as if they were friends, and she must think they were, since she had Light's phone number, though he couldn't recall who she was. She was freaking out over a project she had forgotten was due the next day, and asking if he could pretty pretty please text her his notes. He didn't know what he'd answered, but trusted himself to put on a polite, helpful façade and tell her he promised to see what he could do as soon as he got home.  
He watched himself walk into his house. The next moment he was sitting in his room, which he could only assume he'd entered at some point, eating potato chips from a bag he guessed he'd taken from the kitchen, and whose taste he was only very vaguely aware of. He wasn't aware of when exactly he finished eating his potato chips or where the packaging went, but in what seemed like a blink of an eye he wasn't eating anymore, he was texting somebody. He assumed he must be talking to the classmate he's sure he doesn't know, about a project he doesn't think he had any idea about until minutes -- hours? seconds? -- ago. He took his sweet time explaining the subject and giving her all the details so she wouldn't make any blatant mistakes, and by the end of it she sent him a message thanking him so much, followed by a million emoticons. As soon as he flipped his phone closed, he realised he wouldn't be able to tell what they had talked about if asked.  
He had dinner with his parents and sister. They were blurry figures, who had asked him things he didn't understand, and didn''t remember answering, but judging by their reactions, he was sure he did. The food tasted like tv static, and he couldn't be sure how much he ate, though it couldn't have been too little, his parents would have commented on his lack of appetite.  
Suddenly he was back in his room, already in his pajamas. Had he taken a shower? He must have, he decided, though there was no way he could tell. You can't feel dirty or clean if you can't feel anything else.  
He climbed into his bed, and tucked himself under the blankets. Even safe and warm in his own room, he was still shaking like a leaf. At first, he was still a hologram, projected over his body but in no way connected to it, but the weight and heat of the blankets did a good job on grounding him. Soon enough, he could see his hands through his own eyes, and he could actually control them instead of simply watching as they moved. Shaking violently, he grabbed at his blankets and arranged them around himself in a weak attempt of a blanket burrito. He didn't remember ever shuddering this badly in his life, he could feel his muscles randomly spasming and his left eye wouldn't stop twitching. Why am I reacting like this?, he asked himself, What's happening?  
Eventually, he started feeling pain, even if only a dulled down version of it, and the fear catched up to him. His eyes ran over every square centimeter of his room over and over again, like he was expecting some sort of demon to materialize there any moment. His breath was coming ragged, and even though he was technically back in his body's diver's seat, he didn't have it in himself to try and calm down.  
Part of him knew he should focus on his breathing, but the rest of him was too worked up to care. It had happened, it had happened _again_ , why had it hapenned again, _how_ could he let it happen again, _what_ was he supposed to do, _should he tell somebody_ , how _did_ he get _home_ , _what happened_ , had he taken a shower, _why couldn't he breathe-_  
  
Even though Light knew he'd woken up the next day and gone to school as usual, he's rather not dwell too much on it, thinking about those lost days made him dizzy. After passing out in his bed, he only regained conscience five days later.

**Author's Note:**

> if you can think of anything positive to say, i would really appreciate it if you left a comment! this is the first writing project i've finished in years, and even though it's a self projection vent death note fanfic in the year of our lord 2020, it still means a lot to me <3
> 
> the title is a reference to Apprehensions, by Sylvia Plath


End file.
